The Avro Atlantic (Avro 722) was a proposed civilian airliner version of the British Avro Vulcan

strategic bomber A strategic bomber is a medium- to long-range penetration bomber aircraft designed to drop large amounts of air-to-ground weaponry onto a distant target for the purposes of debilitating the enemy's capacity to wage war. Unlike tactical bombers, ...

. It was a response to a 1952 UK

Ministry of Supply The Ministry of Supply (MoS) was a department of the UK government formed in 1939 to co-ordinate the supply of equipment to all three British armed forces, headed by the Minister of Supply. A separate ministry, however, was responsible for aircr ...

requirement for a new aircraft suitable for both military and civilian long-range roles. Civilian models of the

Vickers Valiant The Vickers Valiant was a British high-altitude jet bomber designed to carry nuclear weapons, and in the 1950s and 1960s was part of the Royal Air Force's "V bomber" strategic deterrent force. It was developed by Vickers-Armstrongs in response ...

and Handley Page Victor V-bombers were also planned for the same contract. The Vickers V-1000 won the contest over the Atlantic, but ultimately none of these designs would be built.

Development

In early June 1953, Sir Roy Dobson C.B.E., then Managing Director of A.V. Roe and Company, revealed"Civil Aviation: Avro Atlantic Unveiled", ''Flight'', 12 June 1953, p.761. that the company was working on a project for a 100-ton airliner based on the Vulcan. The aircraft as initially envisaged, would have carried a flight crew of five (pilot, co-pilot, navigator and two engineering officers) as well as between 76 and 113 passengers in one of three separate configurations (luxury, basic and tourist) at speeds in excess of or Mach 0.9 in a pressurised cabin with an equivalent altitude of at . The chief designer of Avro at the time, after

Roy Chadwick Roy Chadwick, CBE, FRSA, FRAeS (30 April 1893 – 23 August 1947) was an aircraft design engineer for the Avro Company. Born at Marsh Hall Farm, Farnworth, Widnes, the son of the mechanical engineer Charles Chadwick, he was the chief designer f ...

's death, was Stuart Davies. Avro 722 Atlantic top-view silhouette

The Atlantic would have been powered either by

Bristol Olympus The Rolls-Royce Olympus (originally the Bristol B.E.10 Olympus) was the world's second two- spool axial-flow turbojet aircraft engine design, first run in May 1950 and preceded only by the Pratt & Whitney J57, first-run in January 1950. It is ...

or Rolls-Royce Conway engines. Artists illustrations at the time show passengers in a diameter fuselage, seated in two rows, two-abreast, with a single central aisle, with the seats facing towards the rear of the aircraft for safety reasons. The aircraft was initially depicted in illustrations and 1/24-scale models using the original Vulcan wing planform with a straight-line, swept back leading edge, but a 1955 design revision showed the later Phase 2 'kinked' leading edge to overcome buffet during flight. It was anticipated that the Atlantic would be complete by 1958, and initial discussions were held with British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) regarding the viability of the proposal. Avro is reported to have considered a civilian version of the Vulcan as 'inevitable' in 1954–55, and insisted on an initial order of at least 25 aircraft before it would commence production; these orders were not forthcoming.

References

{{Avro aircraft Abandoned civil aircraft projects of the United Kingdom Avro aircraft 1950s British airliners Quadjets Tailless delta-wing aircraft

Development

See also

References